


Gilded Memories

by whereyoursoulresides



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: A lot of liberal creative license here, F/M, First life, Gen, Golden Kingdom, M/M, SilMil, Silver Millennium Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 14:04:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13389354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereyoursoulresides/pseuds/whereyoursoulresides
Summary: Collection of of scenes, one-shots or ficlets illustrating the lives of the Shitennou during the Golden Kingdom. Set in the same universe/continuum as First, but with more thematic focus and exploration on other key players of the Elysian Court. KunzitexZoisite is the predominant pairing, with some references to EndymionxSerenity. Not posted in chronological order.





	Gilded Memories

**Author's Note:**

> An exploration of the women in Kunzite’s first life, and the impact they have had on his character. Characters featured: Reika, Venus, Beryl. Ultimate final pairing: Kunzite/Zoisite.
> 
> Tags: a lot of liberal creative license here, it’s almost an exploration of Kunzite discovering his sexuality and orientation, bisexual

Goddess 

Kunzite had never considered himself particularly sexual.

 

It is true he had the occasional urges, but he never felt the urge reduce him to the physical baseness he had seen other soldiers do. The growling, the hollering, the guttural grunting and slapping - the sounds that men made when they considered themselves truly as such.

 

What he felt instead (in addition to the physicality of it all) - was a deep sense of elation. Admiration. Inspiration. It filled his chest with air and rooted deeper within him than any man could lose himself in a woman. _This_ sensation was closer to the euphoria that had been described to him, a sense of true awe, of being humbled, and finding meaning. In his earlier years, he could understand how men could be intoxicated with this  sense of total completion and purpose.

 

So when he found Reiche, a goddess in the shadows of a nameless tavern bar, he was lost.

 

\---

 

Reiche was beautiful in all the ways Kunzite could have imagined. She was intelligent, compassionate and stunning...a true work of art, elegance and softness in a painter’s charcoal. The worn warmth of her arms and her thick mahogany locks shone before Kunzite like slivers of gold stumbling between rocks and soil. She was older than Kunzite, only slightly - but in her air and grace, she was worlds beyond all he had experienced in his nineteen years of life.

 

When she took him to her bed, she was always gentle. She was a teacher in every sense of the word, and opened his eyes to the physicality of love, as well as the spiritual. Together they discussed the difference, the similarities. Though Kunzite had little understanding between the two (or was it three) of love, lust and more, over time they became good friends, deep friends...kindred spirits aspiring for more in a war-torn world. He, to protect and preserve as a soldier and guardian, and she the same, as a doctor of medicine.

 

But such aspirations were higher than a cliff-face for peasants such as they, and in this they bonded between sheets, trailing fingers down the curves of each other’s body, grazing the textures of one another’s flesh.

 

Though she was a prostitute, Kunzite had considered bringing her home to his family. Had war not already been his destiny, he could see her being his wife - her company brought him peace, awe, and a smile. She warmed his heart and was a good soul through and through. She did not deserve the life she had. Thus Kunzite always sent her a fraction of his pay every month after that first night, with no expectation for her to work. Thus the great ship he arranged for her and her child, to come work in Elysian as the city’s first ever woman-doctor, when he first became one of the Shitennou.

 

Though goddess she was, an eternal friend was all she could remain.

 

\---

 

She was grace and she was beauty. She was love and she was stunning. She was Venus, and all of Earth knew of her gilded hair and twinkling, sunny laugh as well as the knew the Sun.

 

But she was more than beauty, as she curtsied in her sunflower-yellow dress, a golden sword strapped to her back. Her eternal youthfulness disguised an immense strength, twenty-four-carat gold covered steel. When he bowed and they both rose, he struck by her unwavering fearlessness and incredible clarity - optimism in the face of death, certainty in what laid before her. She would lay her life for her Princess at a moment’s hesitance, breast bared and throat open, and she would do so with a smile on her face.

 

Above all else, Venus’ beauty was in her strength, and in this manner, Kunzite could find no other who could compare. As he danced with her, arms weaving, cloaks and trains swirling, friction sparking between the brush of his cotton gloves and her chiffon bracelet - Kunzite could imagine losing himself in those sharp, crystal-blue doe eyes. Together they could clash blades, watch and protect, and become one in the lament of what they could not have. He could see Venus as his wife, and seriously considered it when Endymion proposed as such.

 

But her youthfulness was perhaps too eternal, and her loyalty and dedication too sharp. Her warmth was comfort at a foot’s distance, but smelting when duty seared through. Though goddess she was, he could not reach the sky to touch her, less he was burned.

 

\---

 

If Venus was sun, then _she_ was dark.

 

 _She_ was evocative and seductive, like a shadow gliding over curtains at twilight. Her long locks were a deep blood red, rich and luminous. She was tall like Reiche, strong like Venus. She had her own sense of compassion, which was a delicate balance between law and kindness. In her, Kunzite truly saw a monarch, and imagined she as Gaia’s incarnate - protective, fierce, and motherly.

 

When she walked with Kunzite through gardens of thorns under a blanket of stars, she was both a friend and a dream. She walked with the weight of knowing and the spine to deliver it. While Reiche swaddled her little one in shadows and Venus drew her blade too quick, Beryl kept herself measured, controlled. Kunzite often thought of her as wine, as she seemed to be its personification - stunning, aged, fortified. In Beryl he found both an equal, and a comfort. She was most _goddess_ he could ever liken thus far.

 

So when Endymion turned his back on her for the child-princess of the Moon, Kunzite could not understand.

 

\---

 

It was days before the end of the Silver Millennium, though Kunzite did not know it at the time. He sat on the edge of the bed, facing the open doors that lead to the empty balcony. The early morning wind lifted the chiffon curtains like ghosts. Kunzite listened to the crickets announce the coming of war, though anyone else had yet to know.

 

Above him, the moon’s face shone like an ominous beacon in the sky. It hovered as though constantly surveilling, constantly watching. In a few days’ time, the Prince would go up to the Princess and ask for her hand. After the wedding, the Silver Crystal would sit on the throne, and had the power to bring life, death, or total loss of freedom and autonomy, with just a breath. The Prince and Master Kunzite had once loved and served was handing a child-god a marriage proposal, with Earth as the engagement ring.

 

As Kunzite pondered the meaning of the word - marriage, wedding, _wife_ \- the bed sheets rustled behind him, and his bed companion rolled over. The mattress creaked softly with the sense of normalcy, and his partner roused contently, licking their lips and brushing back their thick, tangled, coppery hair.

 

“Kunzite-sama?” his partner breathed. “What’s the matter?”

 

Kunzite glanced back up at the moon, before looking over his shoulder. His lover laid sprawled on the bed, the pale moonlight highlighting the cream of his skin, the marbling of his shoulder. His ginger curls were luminous and his face was sculpted between boyish and adulthood; a true Adonis.

 

Kunzite laid back down and rolled over to face the smaller man. He let his fingers explore the soft curls, taking in the pools of ivy-green, the thickness of his heavy lashes.

 

“It’s nothing,” Kunzite answered quietly, brushing the boy’s cheek lightly. “Go back to sleep.”

 

Soft lips spread into a smile, as his partner shifted closer to him.

 

“Don’t forget about me,” Zoisite whispered sleepily as he happily cuddled to his master’s touch. “Whatever you need, I’m here.”

 

Kunzite smiled again, and ran his fingers through the boy’s thick hair.

 

“I know. I won’t.”


End file.
